Transcribing History

Through an Explore America internship, Nora Beebe ’26 worked on The Revolutionary City, a project of the American Philosophical Society to digitize all manuscripts from 1774-1783 held by APS, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Nora Beebe '26 points to a digitized letter from George Washington in the software she uses to create or verify transcriptions for the American Philosophical Society.Nora Beebe ’26 spent the summer getting to know dozens of Philadelphians who lived during the Revolutionary era. She came to talk about them as if she had gotten to know them personally, and in a way, she had: by reading their correspondence and documents, she learned the way one man used his diary for “little Yelp reviews,” the interactions between husbands and wives, the recriminations sent by letter between relatives caught on different sides of the period’s political divides.  

As part of her Explore America internship with the American Philosophical Society (APS), Beebe contributed to a five-year project called The Revolutionary City, which is digitizing all of the manuscripts from that time period in three important collections in Philadelphia.  

Beebe read through letters, journals, and other handwritten records, transcribing the 18th-century cursive documents or verifying and correcting transcriptions created by an AI model trained by APS. Her work, as with that of three Washington interns in previous summers, helped to ensure the clean text in the digitized content accurately conveyed what was written in the original documents. This work was essential for the digitization project proper, making historical primary source material available online for researchers and the public. 

But The Revolutionary City also aims to reach new audiences—beyond the historians and academics traditionally interested in such documents— and to unearth untold stories from the time period. Beebe had a role in that effort as well, working throughout the summer to create a timeline for the Revolutionary City website telling the story of the Quaker exiles, Philadelphia men sent from Pennsylvania to Virginia in 1777 because of their refusal to support the revolutionary cause due to their pacifism, their loyalty to the crown, or both. 

The combination of primary source research, the revolutionary era, and a story revolving around a religious group was ideal for Beebe, who is a double major in philosophy and political science, with a minor in religion. 

“I’m still interested in philosophy, but it definitely opened more paths for me and helped me realize how much I really do enjoy history,” Beebe said of the internship. “I’ve always really loved history. Ever since I was little, I was surrounded by Revolutionary War stuff.” 

That was due in large part to her father, Glen Beebe ’81 P ’26, who majored in history at Washington College and earned the Alumni Service Award last year. The two were able to share their excitement as Beebe let her father know about interesting tidbits she picked up in her research. 

The experience Beebe grew up having, with someone excited about history and helping to connect her with it, is the experience her colleagues at the American Philosophical Society want more people to have. APS Head of Digital Access Sabrina Bocanegra, who was Beebe’s supervisor for the summer, said that in addition to making manuscripts available online, she views the stories and multimedia presentations of those stories—like the Quaker exiles—as an essential part of their work because it can engage more people in Revolutionary history. 

“It’s about pulling out these narratives that people don’t know about. We want to reach a really broad audience—teachers of all grades, genealogists, the interested public,” Bocanegra said. “A lot of people are excited about the American Revolution in different ways all leading up to the semiquincentennial [the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year].” 

Beebe noted that the way her internship familiarized her with letters, receipts, journal entries, and more as sources for learning about history made her realize the value of creating digitized and transcribed documents and of showcasing lesser-known stories found within them. She said she hopes more people will take advantage of the opportunity to study history in this more direct way. 

"Having the Revolutionary City portal and having access to all these documents, it made me realize that reading primary sources is actually not scary and something that people should do more often because they're so easy to read and they have so much more information than the Spark Notes version of them,” Beebe said. “I look at these primary sources, and they're just normal, regular, everyday people. Benjamin Franklin is really funny. Ebenezer Hazard writes Yelp reviews. James Pemberton just misses his wife all the time.”

In addition to the interesting view of history, Beebe said the internship overall gave her a great opportunity to make some connections in Philadelphia and to start preparing for possible graduate studies. But supporting the mission of the Revolutionary City project to make history accessible meant the most this summer. 

“Even though it is challenging at times, it makes me feel like I'm really contributing to something more than myself, more than just doing a job,” Beebe said. “It makes me feel like I'm giving back to other people, to help future or current historians.” 

Ensuring access for current and future scholars and the public is at the heart of all of the American Philosophical Society’s work. Researchers travel to the APS reading room for access to the original documents, but the work of the digital access team expands what the society can offer, according to APS Head of Reference Joseph DiLullo.  

“Most of this material we’re working with is unique. It is nowhere else. We’re stewards of this world-class collection,” DiLullo said. “The digitization work is an important part of the work we do. Digitization is this amazing tool both for access and for preservation.”  

To learn more about Beebe’s project, check out the Explore America Summer Internship Showcase on September 17 & 18 from 5 to 6 p.m. in the Egg in Hodson Hall. If you are interested in trying your hand at some of what she did, APS is holding “A Revolutionary Transcribe-a-thon" on Oct. 16 in Philadelphia. Click here to register. 

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven